Two wins. One in Conference USA. With just two games remaining in the regular season and at least one in the C-USA Tournament, it seems likely that Houston will set a school record for fewest wins in a season, which is five (set in the 1996-97 season and matched in 1998-99)

The loss to Rice marked the first time since the 1986-87 season that the women’s hoops team has been swept by the Owls and the 28-point margin of victory was the largest for Rice in the series between the teams.

History aside, Thursday’s result was of particular frustration to coach Todd Buchanan after his team was competitive against the Owls in the teams’ first meeting on Jan. 28, a 58-50 Rice win at Hofheinz Pavilion. That day, the Cougars showed a certain level of fight and grit that wasn’t present on Thursday.

A frustrated Todd Buchanan (Schneider)

“Shocked, surprised, disappointed, furious. You could throw any of them in there and that would be appropriate to where I’m at with it,” Buchanan said. “I was blown away, absolutely blown away, with our effort to start a basketball game — any basketball game, much less it being Rice, crosstown rival, conference rival, in-the-city rival. It’s just a horrible feeling. And I feel like so much of it was so self-inflicted on our inability to show up to play.”

Houston fell behind 13-4 in the early going, then went long stretches in between baskets. After a bucket at the 12:51 mark in the first half, the Cougars didn’t score again until 7:33 remained in the first half, then went another 4:33 without a point until finally hitting double digits at the 3:00 mark of the first half.

The Cougars turned the ball over 11 times in the first half (though they did take better care of it in the final 20 minutes, turning it over just twice more), shot 25 percent from the field for the game (and was consistent in that clip throughout the night) and got killed on the glass, being outrebounded 59-38.

“Incredibly disappointing. Infinity. There is no number that could be high enough in the percentage ratio to explain how disappointed I am,” Buchanan said. “We all have limitations. Basketball, business people, it doesn’t matter what you do. The smart people, the successful people, they understand those limitations and they go to their strengths. Well, we have a lot of limitations, but it’s like I’ve been telling them every single day, every single day at practice, games, everybody can decide to show up and work hard. Whether it’s business, a basketball player. You choose to show up and play hard. Those are the things we can control. And right now I’m beyond profoundly disappointed in our effort.”

The Cougars have two more regular season games left before the C-USA tournament: their home finale at noon on Sunday vs. Central Florida (televised on Fox Sports Net) and a road game at Tulane on March 1.

12 Responses

So none of it is his own fault as a coach? They had one assist as a team the whole night. Did he even call plays to run or does he just let his players (Button primarily) do one-on-one moves the whole game?

He has counted himself among those that need to get better on several occasions this year (I remember in particular after the Cougars lost to Marshall back in January he said ‘I’m failing as a basketball coach.’ But he felt there wasn’t enough effort on Thursday. And I know they do call plays because they run a lot of plays throughout the game. Button is the primary ballhandler on most of them.
-SK

This season has been a complete letdown for both the mens and womens teams.
I hope we can turn this around and I hope this season
doesn’t have a negative effect on our commitments.

Sam, Now that things have calmed down a bit with football season winding down recruiting over and all of the i’s have been dotted and the t’s crossed maybe you could sit down with Mack and get some more scoop about the stadium, i.e. naming rights, donations, and any word from the O’Quinn estate, and the revised timetable for final stadium plans being presented, who the finalist for architects are, ground breaking date and the site situation. Seems like there is lots of good subject matter for an article.
Keep up the great work.

Cougar Bob,
I certainly will keep close tabs on that stuff and if Mack says anything of substance I will certainly write about it. I definitely bug him about stadium stuff whenever I see him, but he’s pretty careful about his public comments. As we get closer to the next regents meeting, I think we’ll know a bit more about the situation.
-SK

I know its all because of injuries, but this says something about recruiting and motivating/coaching. I gotta think that there have to be some talented girls at our school somewhere, its not like girls high school hoops just got started. There are 38,000 students, probably 19,000 girls, lets say only 1% played basketball, thats still 190 to chose from. I think Coach needs to either come up with some heavy recruits, at least 10 3 star recruits, should be easy going into BEC, or else he needs to fire up his resume.

The recruiting class coming in for the next season is rated pretty well. I think next season, you’ll see that this year was a bit of an aberration. It’s one thing to have injuries, but they all came to players that were either going to start or play significant minutes off the bench. It has been quite a challenge.
-SK

I agree with the problem being a lot of injuries, especially at the guard position. We have point guard Landry coming back and a Texas Tech transfer. UH has a lot of good recruits coming in. The coaches have done a good job on recruiting. Coach needs to remain positive during the game. Players react better to explaining and encouragement than yelling at them. Also coach, do not let everything hang out on post-game reviews. I do like Coach Buchanan’s style of play.

UH needs to step up with both programs, and it only has a year to do it. Both the men and women have fallen short of expectations this year. I can’t imagine what it will be like with these two teams in the Big East. If UH wants to be in the most big-time basketball conference, shouldn’t it act like it wants to be there? We need serious improvement.

2 wins the entire season? i think it’s more than just injuries. coach needs to take a good look at what’s going on with his his program. it took a gigantic step back this season. he and dickey have some proving to do for next season. if dickey doesn’t have AT LEAST a winning record next seaon, he should be gone. His first 2 season have been close to a disaster.